i want to move into the hollow of your heart,
pack all i own into my battered backpack
& lay it out to rest on your bedroom shelves,
run run run down
the ice-slick streets in winter until i finally reach you,
until i am home/to be alone/with you

there are years that ache like bruises on my thighs
& years that are soft like rabbit ears, like flannel pajamas
like the way it feels to have found you.
at last, at last:
the morning birds murmur their musings
as we sip cocoa so sweet & so hot it scalds my throat
but not, but not,
but not nearly as much
as your mouth brands my lips yours.

someday, someday,
someday, pretty baby,
time will pass in kisses,
the coffeepot hisses,
you will find yourself waking
in a cathedral of our warmth
new-day light spilling over our bodies,
the ocean-state sheets –
you will know.
you will know – i will tell you now,
but someday you will know -
you are going to be safe,
finally safe, forever.

i will love you.  i will love you.  i will love you.

all of life’s a game & i’m playing to win
this means making love to myself & apologizing to my ruined skin
this means i give a smile to every stranger who looks me in the eye
this means the word may be sharp to the touch but i am trying to be very soft.

we’re all a mess of broken hearts & tangled brain wires
empty stomachs, borderline suicide bids, a telephone call away
from an emergency waiting to happen,
but i’m sick & tired of being bitter.
this is how you thaw.
this is how you taste sweeter.
this is how you live, now,

dear brokenness: i do not belong in your cemetery.
my roots have spread wide & deep,
i am anchored to this earth with everything i have left.
you gave me a shovel, said to dig my own grave
& i used it to plant a garden around me.
here is where i learn to love me.
here is when i hold my own hand.
here is how you start over.

when every day is all pen ink running dry & shaky caffeine fingers,
panic attack fever & ***** bathroom stall tears,
remember you already survived yourself.  remember you took poison pills
& they couldn’t even **** you. mama never said there’d be days like these
but this has always been more hailstorms than sweater weather.

give me something ****** & sentient,  i need
to be touched so badly,
even if it comes sharp knuckles & bruises.
i need everyone to love me but all i see is you.
glassy-eyed & giving my all,
finally on the verge of becoming,
this is what i give you.
this is my offering.

& then you tell me i’m doing so good
& kiss the splash of coffee from my nose
see, i want the whole world remembered in my neurons,
in my fingertips, in the backs of my eyelids
i want an infinity of foreign places burned into my brain
but if you’re the only country i rest my roots into
i want nothing else.

all the strangeness & sadness in the world
gets under my skin at three a.m. with the lights off
the world falls fast asleep
as my fingers pray their nervous way
to grasp at my stomach, measuring.
always measuring.
there’s always pills with breakfast
& food i don’t want to eat, a room
full of faces & i can’t even recognize my own.

when it’s cold & my lips are numb, teeth clattering,
i am finally alive. winter is a wild thing,
dragging out the demons until they go for the throat.
i want a feeling so hard it hurts.
i want any feeling at all.

listen: there’s a million reasons i have to stay alive
even though there are days when the one not to
is the only thought to occupy my mind.

my sadness is not sweet
it’s the mornings i can’t drag myself out of bed
because i’m so violently miserable
& you haven’t even left yet.

it wasn’t always cherry chapstick kisses & origami lilies,
but i tell myself not to remember  the way i cried over you,
learning the way loss tastes like saltwater,
feels like the hectic seaside, storming away
i never knew a girl could crack me open at the hinges
until you

we were always too supernova
never knowing quite what was happening
when we met skin to skin & flared from the intensity
those days were an amusement park ride, sometimes up
more often down
but we were never wrong, or at least
i think we could’ve Made It or even been Forever
given a fair chance
i always wished i was more rabbit fur to the touch,
less gun muzzle nuzzling your ribs
my sadness was a burden i didn’t want you to bear
my sadness is the dead tree limb hanging from the apple tree
i’m sorry i didn’t make you more chocolate frosting
i’m sorry i didn’t know the right words to say
i’m sorry i wasn’t enough to help you be whole again

it wasn’t always you & i, even though
it’s hard to remember anything before
& it’s been five years
five years
i’m still too ******* soft for you
i’m still too sentimental

my poems are rarely about you anymore
but every heart metaphor & ragged feeling
had to come from somewhere
when i dredge up the memories,
the happy bits come up before the rest
the way you wanted to eat noodles with me at midnight
the way we knew how to hold each other from the first time
the way i wasn’t bones with you & my eyes were bright

i’ve always been into you like a moth to the lamplight
& you’re going to be safe forever
they’re going to love you
& i miss you like winter & nighttime smoke fixes
but i’m okay now
& i hope you are too

all i know of my sadness is this:
it kills me or i learn to live with open wounds.
nineteen years & i’m tired of half-life,
treating the disease as if it can be cured
when these are the cards i’ve been dealt.

but i have no place to heal.
my parent’s house is not my home.
i thought i’d grown roots too deep to damage.
but i ripped myself out by accident.  chose my own path.
the trouble is, i’m running blind through the brambles.
trying to right the wrongs.  every step i make towards where i want to be,
something else has to give.  
the scratches left on my bare limbs just won’t heal.

the truth is, i’m halfway to giving up on getting better.
the truth is, i need a promise that the future is worth fighting for.
the truth is, i’m not sure i’m okay.

i am my own lighthouse.  my own lanternlight.
i am my own constellations when i’m drowning in the blackness.
but i don’t want to be alone.
i’ve been alone far too long
& i don’t want to be alone.
not again.  not ever.

they say, everything is temporary
they say, some die yearning for a hand to hold
& i swear, i will not be one of them.

hello cinematic sky dripping dead birds &
your moonshine eyes.  nothing burns sweeter than
the liquor on our tongues when they twine tighter
than a newborn's clenched fist.  you so lost ships. you
empty cornfield.  wanna bury my body in your fleshly limbs.
feel the tattoo of your heart.  there's a bullet with
my name on it.  you can be a pistol or you can be
the stars.  either way, i beneath you always. watch the
fireflies make love as my lights go out.